| 06 September 2010
There was a couple minutes left in the interview when Luis Tiant suddenly turned the tables.
The Red Sox great and former Portland Beaver had a question of his own.
“David Hersh...do you know where David Hersh is...," Tiant asked.
"I'd like to hear from him."
At that time, tracking down Hersh was part of the game plan, which only increased as the story deadline drew closer and Tiant's request to hear from Hersh lingered. Numbers were eventually exchanged. Hopefully a phone call was too. But in the end, these two men will forever be connected even if the years and realities of life have kept them apart. One thing is for sure: baseball in Portland united Tiant and Hersh in one of the more interesting stories in Beavers history.
On Monday, a feature story on Tiant ran in the Oregonian as part a fond farewell for the Portland Beavers, who won their final home game, 6-5 against Las Vegas. PGE Park was packed and the place was buzzing leaving people to realize it was too little, too late. And even as minor league baseball departs Portland, some still believe Portland isn’t a minor league town: it’s a major league city. David Hersh – the one-time owner/general manager of the Beavers and a minor league baseball mogul – is one of those people who prescribe to this train of thought.
Much like Tiant, maybe Hersh will one day return to Portland.
Now that would be a story to tell.
Tiant and the Portland Beavers, by David Hersh – as told to Wendell Maxey
If everyone who claimed they’d seen Luis Tiant pitch in 1964 when he was first with the Beavers, and bought a ticket to see Tiant pitch when we had him in 1981, there wouldn’t be enough stadiums on the West Coast to handle the crowds.
We had known from the strike previous that networks like TBS were filling [air time] with minor league baseball coverage, so it was thought of in the offseason to become – if you will – “Americas team” which is the way the (Atlanta) Braves are referred to now. No one was fooling anyone. We knew Luis didn’t want to play for the Portland Beavers for all of 1981. He was using us, we were using him. We recognized that between us.
What was drawing well for us? In my mind, anything over 15,000 fans is drawing well. I don’t think we drew 6,000 [per game at Civic Stadium].
Player agreements were entirely different then. We could sign our own free agents as a minor league team. We had a working agreement with Pittsburgh, which enabled us to do things with our roster as long as we weren’t interfering with the development plan of the Pirates.
I remember that we got a little ink out of that [signing Tiant]. We knew it would be a nice PR move for the franchise and with Luis’ tremendous knowledge of pitching, that he would not embarrass the franchise.
It’s one of those things that I think about with great affection: I loved Portland and I still love Portland.
The Portland Beavers – at least in my heart – and Portland is a major league city and that’s what drew me there. It was a first class opportunity. Now I’m sitting here in 2010 and watching the same opportunity slip away since 1978 or earlier.
There is nothing healthy that I can add to the discussion. There has yet to be 100 percent leap of faith necessary to make Portland a major league baseball town and until that bridge is crossed, it’s going to be a “what if” scenario. That goes for the current ownership group and teams coming and teams going. The one thing that everyone has in common is that they saw the opportunity and they’ve continued to be hindered by the facility. We will never know the potential, because everyone has been swimming in the direction.
If we all keep coming back to the same issue, sooner or later someone is going to be the one to solve that problem.
Look, history is made of my mistakes. I’ve made plenty. But we always tried to present ourselves as, if you’re going to play minor league baseball, we want you to play in Portland, Oregon. We had seats to sell. We were always looking for a good reputation among players. I’d like to think we treated our players well.
The sad part about this world of sports is that you meet so many good friends and so many good people, and then you grow apart and you don’t see them.
photo: sptimes
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